CG landmark mall Chitwan: A review

This is a part of 'project 110, going back and re-filling', writing is happening 8ish months after the date.

I jut finished writing about Bhat Bhateni Chitwan, and here we are with CG Landmark mall.

Visited here a couple of weeks ago when I visited Chitwan with my parents. As they watched a movie in the cinema hall on the top, I took a couple of rounds of the building and ate at the food court.

I talk about the aspirational nature of malls and department stores in the next post, but that doesn't necessarily apply here. Because there is no goddamn way Chaudhary group is making money on this mall, this is surely the largest and most expensive billboard they could have constructed for "CG Group" to remind people they are involved in many projects including a massive temple an hour away. For half the stores here were either shutting down or in the process of doing so. The ones that were open were selling cheap Chinese knockoff products, but with expensive branding, hoping to lure unsuspecting buyers -- would anybody even get tricked with such halfassed fooling -- with the aura of wealth and glam and convince them they are the real deal.

Again, there is no goddamn way this mall is in any shape or form financially viable, or will ever be. It'll be a big red mark on the company's balance sheet for a long time. Perhaps it's the fact that the target audience for this sort of place would rather just buy in Kathmandu? Or maybe they're smart enough to buy in Bharatpur? It's also possible they don't have enough critical mass of population to sustain the surely egregious rents, even if they did end up paying real-deal prices for knockoff products. Or maybe this is all some absurdist drama, where the builders pretend this will work, the shops pretend they're real and the shoppers pretend they're really interested in buying the wares, and nothing comes off it.

Really bizarre place, this. I have a piece I'll be writing soon about the food court, that's the only part of the building, besides the movie theater (more problems with that as well, apparently they cancel a lot of showings due to the lack of a minimum number, 15, of audience members) and the food court.

How do I score it? I don't know. My rating is: good luck!